Jesse Walker on Multimedia from WWII to the Psychedelic ’60s

How much autonomy does a video
game player have? Unlike a viewer watching a movie or TV show, the
gamer makes decisions with consequences for the unfolding story. He
controls a character, and he determines how that figure moves
through a virtual space. And yet he does this all within the
parameters set out by the game’s designers, which constrain his
choices and often guide him, with a heavy or a light hand, to
predetermined outcomes. There are new freedoms here, but there are
new forms of manipulation too, and they interact in complicated,
ever-shifting ways. Jesse Walker reviews The Democratic
Surround, a smart and fascinating new history that explores
the development of such freedoms and manipulations as our
multimedia world blossomed.

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